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Video Game Music Mixes
Matt Pollard writes: "A group of video game music fanatics and musicians have opened up a new website at VGMix.com. If you're like us, sometimes you can't get the snazzy tunes of today's video games out of your head. Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school."
Get some Dance Dance Revolution music. There are tunes on there that I will not get out of my head for another century or so.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Overclocked Remix deserves some credit. It's a moderated remix website that's been running for a few years.
http://remix.overclocked.org
I wish I could get Slashdot to launch all of my web sites.
Will any of these remixes be availible for my PC speaker?
Beep-boop-beep-be-beep
Veramocor
Veramocor
First off, I don't believe in sexy developers and second if these music production and archive shops do have sexy developers I'm in the wrong admin role.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
May seem a bit offtopic but Ozma has a great cover song of 'Korobeiniki.' Ozma's just a damn good band and it's my job of an over-obsessed fan to advertise 'em as much as I can...
Ozma Mp3's
Ozma's Website
Vgmix.com: say hello to the Slashdotting!
"this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school"
So I was in my Calculus class about four months ago, hanging around, being relatively bored, so I started singing the "dada Da dada da, da..." and charged into the entire Super Mario Brothers song. My friends sitting next to me start chiming in and joining up. Now this would have been fine and all, If I hadn't then broken into the end bit with the flagpole and the fireworks... and then continued on to level 1-2 (Dada da dada da, da... Dooo! Dooo! Dooo! Dananananana.... Dananananana...). My friend sitting next to me collapsed over in laughter... I think I broke her.
The end.
Karma: Non-Heinous
They also have some remixes. Mostly it's ripped stuff, though.
Also, if you're willing to wade through tons of "inspired by" shit, MP3.com's electronic section has lots of good remixes...many are also on other sites like remix.overclocked.org, though.
There is another site that has been around for a while that deals only with video game remixes as well. Overlocked Remix has listings of numerous MP3 format video game music remixes. The genres range from classical to techno to ambient to rock.
Since you need to create a fairly high quality remix in order to get listed on the site, almost all of the music on that site is worth the listen.
If you want to get Sierra Music, visit Quest Studios. They have music of about all Sierra games, some in MP3 and some in MIDI format.
If you like C64 remixes, also check the Remix64 community site out: http://remix64.phatsites.de/. The charts section contains voting charts for the remixes at Remix.Kwed.Org and is a good place to start in order to find out which remixes are worth downloading.
Like most websites, they want to know what users are visiting their sites. They may be using something like bbclone (http://bbclone.tuxfamily.org/) which uses php scripts to log web page accesses... example of a bbclone report is at http://bbclone.tuxfamily.org/varstuff/bbclone-0.15 .1.html
One of the interesting side effects is that it can be a way to find out who is linking to your pages since it also shows the referrer info...
Knowing which browser you use can help in making sure that their pages work in all availible browsers that their potential audiance uses.
{before you say anything... yes... the pages should be optimised for ALL browsers... but then who said we lived in a utopian world...})
--
Time is on my side
For more great game choon remixes, although from the world of Commodore 64, check out these two commonly known great sites:
http://Remix.Kwed.Org
http://www.c64audio.com
Also, quite recently I happened to hear probably the best C64 game remix ever. It's from the game "The Great Gianna Sisters", by a band Machinae Supremacy. Here's the direct link to the MP3 file at their site, and here's another for a mirror at MP3.com. Enjoy! (And may the Gaia forgive me for starting a
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
The same business any web server that logs user agents types has.
Hi folks, I'm virt, the guy who came up with the idea and helped design and implement the site (and whose wallet will ultimately suffer for the slashdotting ;))
:)
...really fun.
I just wanted to say thanks in advance for the support and the interest, and to get a couple of things cleared up.
First of all, we KNOW we're not the first. Believe me, we know. We're just the first site designed from the ground up for the purpose of multi-platform game arrangements. Most of us are people who are also (or have been) active contributors to remix.overclocked.org - OverClocked ReMix is the site that really started it all with game music arrangements, and it's incredible how a real living, breathing community can form around a single niche interest. However, OverClocked started out as a personal site that gradually featured other people's music until it became MOSTLY about other people's music. VGMix was made, back-end and all, specifically for harbouring a community. Few things are done by hand, because we want people to be able to put their stuff up without us babysitting, and let the moderation and reviewing dictate what's enjoyed without any one person trying to decide for the whole community. We're mostly musicians first, game players second, but the entire spectrum of musicians/gamers is represented here, and we all really love what we do. We DO, however, have a Panel of trusted arrangers who can pick what they consider to be exceptional songs and give them separate, "official" attention - but it in no way supersedes the original purpose of the site because it's a "side project."
I consulted with an attorney (got 5 of them in the family, holidays are JUST LOVELY) a long time before I set this site up, and there's nothing illegal about writing music inspired or derived from another's work. If it were REMIXES -- the original audio with a new beat slapped on, for example -- it would not only be illegal but immoral, too, if we didn't ask first. But what we're doing here is interpreting the original song in a new and very changed form. IANAL, but I don't like being sued so I made sure I talked to people who are. OverClocked ReMix is in the same boat. I'm sure someone could disagree or be misinformed and bring a suit against either site, but before it came to that we'd probably skip the hassle in the first place and zap the song. Not likely, though. Us game composer types (I also freelance commercially) are usually laid-back and flattered by arrangements, as long as there's no money being made from them.
Now, VGMUSIC.COM is another story entirely. They have nothing to do with us, but they are a fantastic resource for people who ARE with us. Vgmusic is a place where people submit General MIDI arrangements of game music, usually done by ear by a talented (or not) sequencer. It's like sheet-music transcriptions, just a database of music MIDI files. How is this a fantastic resource? Not everyone who arranges has the kind of ear that allows them to capture the melodies and harmonies by ear, so having a file that they can examine visually is a good thing for them.
So, to sum up, we are well aware that we're not the first, we're just the first set up this way; we're not doing anything illegal, though we'll have to work hard to ensure that our system is not abused; and there are other sites in the game music community that can help us through cooperation. We're not so arrogant as to think we're movers and shakers, we're just guys who love game music and we're trying to provide place to share it that is unlike the others that already exist.
It's a really tiny niche community but it's
-j
If you don't know what it is...use the SPC as the example. SPC is the file format for an SNES sound file...extracted directly from the game. The player emulates the hardware, so it sounds EXACTLY like it does on the SNES.
A few links:
- GBS (Gameboy)
- GYM (Genesis)
- VGM (SMS/GG)
- NSF (NES)
- SPC (SNES)
Links to the players are provided on the individual pages, but the best multi-console music player is Meridian Advance.When you get sick of remixes, check out the originals and remember your childhood
Grand Theft Auto London. Ska, mod pop, and DJ's from the swingin' 60's. Any game soundtrack that features the Upsetters wins, hands down. Sadly, not available at VGMix.com.
My vote for best audio in a C64 game is Frantic Freddy. I just hooked up my old C64 today, and after a little coaxing, I got frantic freddy to load up. That music still sounds just as good today as it ever did.
:).
It's really what got me hooked on classic rock. A 5th of Beethoven, Kodachrome, it's all great stuff. I hope that c64audio.com site has the MIDIs
I'd have to say a close second is some of the audio in Jeff Minter's games. The bach intro to Sheep in Space is excellent.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The theme from Battlesquadron on the amiga is my all time fav. It's even more impressive when you know the composer just typed in hexnumbers in a texteditor :) I hope this site gets that tune up soon :)
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I was having a discussion the other day about this, how people of a certain age have emotional attachments to video game music, and sometimes it's hard to understand.
One of my favorite labels is an online MP3-only label, Monotonik, they have some cool original chip tunes and some Mario remixes (here's one). Actually look around and there's lots of cool stuff for fans of IDM, electronic music, etc.
Also of interest, there's a music machine that uses the sound chip from the C64 (that's Commodore 64, kids) with MIDI support.
Also check out the Minibosses.
Lots of this stuff around! I never played video games much but that stuff all managed to get stuck in my head anyway..
If you want to get more video game music, there is streaming mp3 video game music at Scene Music. They have reflectors around the world, so you should be able to listen to a stream near you. If your lucky enough to have a high speed dsl, try the 128K stream.
BTW, Have you heard Giana Sisters lately?
Old skewl test - mod.gianasisters or gianas.sid
-
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
At companies they play radio music while they put you on hold. No different at our place. In fact the way most companies do this is to hook a radio directly into the phone line (they have a connector and all). Sometimes they hide it away in some corner where very few people visit. That is exactly where they hid it at our place (in the server room).
So my buddy brought in his laptop and we hooked it right up to the phone line. For almost that entire day we were pumping out the Super Mario Brothers theme, some nice game remixes (like Speed Racer) and various other goodies. All good stuff that customers would like to listen to.
We got away with it and we plan on doing it again =)
internet like monkeys'
Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school.
Well, I wouldn't quite say that listening to video game music has anything to do with my youth. Especially not with games like Dance Dance Revolution, Parappa the Rappa, and even Rez where the music is a very integral part of the game itself. I still go around humming the tunes to various video games every day. In fact, lately I've spent so much time in front of our (rather sizeable) collection of game consoles that I've probably heard more video game lately than I have "real" music. A good tune is a good tune, whether it was created for a video game or not.
Although, I am not nearly as hardcore as one of my friends who based part of his decision to purchase a Turbo Duo on the fact that the music on all those games was so damn good. He was right about the quality of the music, though. I was simply amazed at the music compositions from games like Lords of Thunder and Cotton. In fact, in a side by side comparison of Cotton for the Turbo Duo and Cotton for the PSX, the music on the Turbo Duo version was hands down the winner. Video game music kicks ass, dammit!
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks to me like these are remixes that haven't been authorized by the copyright holders. I can't imagine that a media behemoth that does both music and video games, like Sony, is going to let this go on. Maybe they like the fact that fans are preparing the market, but once it starts making money, I bet they will send out their lawyers and want the market for themselves.
So you're saying MIDI doesn't suck; your soundfont sucks. So don't replace the MIDI. Replace the soundfont, or use the MOD family of formats (.mod, .s3m, .xm, .it) that are similar to MIDI but include the soundfont in the file, but because the instrument samples are repeated over and over, it still remains at least an order of magnitude smaller than 128 kbps MP3.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You also have a very good point, one that deserves some more attention. For anyone reading who does not know what we're talking about:
A big point of contention in the freelancing community is the retention of copyrights. Generally the way it's done among beginners is that you sell your music and your rights for a flat rate, and then they "own" the music. However, once you get more into the business side of things and you start writing and revising your own contracts, or adding items to theirs with legal advice, you can switch it around so that you take a pay cut in exchange for the rights to the music.
This is how Tommy Tallarico (a very popular game composer) has a mansion and several sports cars - and undoubtedly many Fly Bitches. The REAL money comes from licensing, franchising and -- for example -- the use of the same music, all for separate royalties, in a PS2, XBox, and Gamecube game, and then a soundtrack album, a television show, a Best-Hits-Games CD-Rom, a commercial excerpt, etc.
That said, some companies who DO own the copyrights might decide to be a little more stringent about sites like this. However, Stateside, I've never heard of a company going after an amateur arranger who is not posing any financial threat to the company. The market for arrangement albums in the US is so amazingly sparse that it just doesn't make sense to throw money at interpreting copyright law to vilify fans who do this as a hobby. And yes, the law would have to be interpreted, as it's always been vague about derivative works. Based upon everything I've heard (from real, living lawyers) doing something like this for fun and COMPLETELY -not for profit- is totally legal.
So, yeah. They could go after us. But that doesn't mean we've done anything wrong, it means they think we have. That's what the law is for. For now, though, it looks like we will remain unbothered by nasty letters just like other arrangement sites.
-j
If you need to play MOD files on a PC with only the internal speaker, try Inertia Player for DOS. Turns out the PC speaker can play 1-bit waveforms using only the internal speaker; toggling that bit fast enough creates a sigma-delta DAC.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The now defunct Hi-Fi Gaming Page, once located at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vetayase/, used to feature huge MP2 downloads and MIDIs back in 1997 or so. This is the site that introduced me to the wonders of MPEG audio. They had some killer remixes of rare games, along with some soundfont downloads, etc. I once got a sweet Super Mario Bros. waltz medley from that site, and I haven't heard it since my HD at the time crashed so many years ago.
Jim Vetayase and the other guys who ran that site moved on to create another site, but I just don't know if that one is still around, and if so, which of the major sites it is. The old Hi-Fi page had a great library of cool stuff, and I'm still looking for that content 5 years later, with no luck. If anybody knows what happened to that site, and where those old downloads can be found nowadays, I'd love a heads-up reply.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
- Tetris
- Korobeiniki
- Korobeyniki
- Korobushka
Good ones includeOr just go to Russia2000 and get 'Korobeyniki' (which incidentally mixes perfectly from "Barbie Girl" by Aqua).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Seriously, you still play NES games? Do you relise how fucking old that tune is and how long it hasn't been used?
It's been used. There's a remix of the SMB1 main theme plus underground theme: turn on Super Smash Bros. Melee, turn off sound fx, start a 1-player adventure game, and press Pause.
Go buy the best gaming system out there, the XBOX
You misspelled "GameCube."
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's also unavailable unless you're paying a premium for dedicated hosting. What do you suggest for virtual-hosted users?
Will I retire or break 10K?
"music inspired by other music is not illegal, though, i must add."
Perhaps I have not made myself clear.
THESE. ARE. NOT. REMIXES.
In fact, the only reason we called it "VGMix" is because "VGArrange" sounds awkward. Arrangements are something else ENTIRELY. They are a completely different type of interpretation. The only case in which copyright could pose a problem is if audio samples from the original song are used. Remember the whole MP3.com fiasco about using sampled material in songs? That was that.
These songs that we have on our site do NOT use the original audio (there are exceptions, of course, but only in tiny snippets, samples. These are completely original, 100% from-scratch pieces of music that are only inspired or loosely melodically / chordally / rhythmically based on the original song. This is a hobby that must often be explained in-depth, but what it really is, down at the core, is composition practice. This is one of the reasons that midi-sequence repositories like vgmix.com come in handy - we're doing it all by ear!
I'm sure I will have to repeat this over and over again over the course of this article's visible lifespan, but vgmix.com does NOT deal in remixes. It's about derivative/inspired works that are created completely by us. We just don't really have a great term for it, so some people call them "remixes" because it's catchy, even though it's completely inaccurate. I just go with "arrangements."
-j
Ever since Genecyst first came out,
Bloodlust's emulators (NESticle, Genecyst) are very dated.
Did the Genesis have any analog components that make it impossible to get it perfect (like beyond-the-ability-of-the-ear-to-ever-tell-perfect )?
The Genesis has a 6-channel Yamaha FM chip and a simple 4-channel tone generator similar to the ones in the Game Boy and NES. A typical game (such as Zero Wing or Sonic the Hedgehog) uses FM channels 1-5 for music, 6 for drum hits, tone generator channels 1-3 for simple 8-bit-style sound fx, and 4 for 8-bit hi-hats and explosions.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The Minibosses also had a really cool contra mix that I could get down to. They did it with live instruments in a pop/punk kinda way. Some downloads at their site to check out:
www.minibosses.com
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
Sorry, but even after 22 years I still cannot get that damned Pac-man opening level music out of my head. I also can recreate every sound from defender,stargate, and defender II (The last 2 are different games I've seen all 3 side by side)For some reason they dont get impressed at management meetings with that ability or like to see it on a resume.
Super Mario Brothers? HA! By the time that came out they lost the ability to make infectious music.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Generic:
http://www.2xtreme.net/zero-g/generic/sound.htm
The Minibosses:
http://www.minibosses.com/
Guitar Tabs courtesy of Generic:
http://www.2xtreme.net/zero-g/generictabs/
BTW, If you want to hear the rest of the Generic songs ... they're not up because they're looking for webspace. Hint hint, nudge nudge.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
There is a player for the original music from Sinclair Spectrum and Amstrad CPC games, called ``aylet'', here. There is an XMMS plugin being developed for this too, here.
Mmmmmm, Bubble Bobble.... doo doo doo doo dooooo, doo doo doo doooo...
;)
-- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989 (supposedly, see here for details)
so I might as well throw in a few links:
Everyone - a vg music tribute band.
Evil Adam - Check out "Zerg Must Die" & "Evil de Chocobo"
[o]_O
I converted the end game music for Karateka into music notation and made a midi file.
Email me if you want it.
Virt? The guy who just adores Trax in Space and that punk melvyl? ;)
Duke Nukem 3D has the best theme music, hands down.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Forget about Super Smash Bros - my cell phone ringer is the Super Mario Brother tune, surprising enough I have actually met some pretty good looking girls because of that - it's a rare novelty and *everyone* loves SMB. And I do in fact still play the original NES. And SNES.
Nothing beats Tetris, Zelda, and Super Mario Kart.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I've heard of a band called 'stratosphere' or something in SF, CA, that does video game covers. Can anyone tell me about them? I don't think I have the name quite right.
So, did your Christmas presents have license agreements inside the wrapping? Was there litigation filed over dinner?
LV
Woot w00t w007.